Scripture passage: (Psalm 139: 1-16)

Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. - John 12:24

Anyone can count the seeds in an apple, but only God can count the number of apples in a seed.-Robert Schuller

The place where light and dark begin to touch is where miracles arise.--Robert A. Johnson

To speak about the God of darkness may seem like a strange meditation to be bringing with the coming of spring and the lengthening of the light, but bear with me.

We talk a lot about God being the light giver. In the Gospel of John in chapter 8, verse 12, John has Jesus say, "I am the world's Light. No one who follows me stumbles around in the darkness." In fact, according to Genesis, God's very first statement went like this: "God spoke: 'Light!' And light appeared. God saw that light was good…" These two verses show the two kinds of light associated with God - physical light in the world, and spiritual light for our darkness. These are important concepts. Anyone who has faced a long night whether from sleeplessness or emotional upset knows how welcome dawn can be.

But let me push this concept a little further. Think of one of those bright hot summer days we have here in Klamath Falls, when the blue of the sky stretches from horizon to horizon, without a cloud in sight. Those are my favorite days, when it is hot and dry and clear. But what if that time became permanent? What if the world just stalled and we were left with that day - no night to bring relief from the heat, no cloud-dimmed days bringing rain - only the incessant, never ending light. Would that change your concept of darkness? The Bible was written in Palestine, a desert-like area where the sun could be the enemy, and crops failed if the spring rains didn't come. So let me talk about the other side - God is also the God of darkness.

I mean this partly in the very obvious way it sounds - God is with us in the actual nighttime, and in the dark night of the soul, and any other kind of darkness you care to mention. In the Psalm that was read this morning, we heard the following:

Then I said to myself, "Oh, he even sees me in the dark! At night I'm immersed in the light!"
It's a fact: darkness isn't dark to you; night and day, darkness and light, they're all the same to you.

God is not affected by light and darkness as we are. God is present in either condition. God is always there for us to call on.

But there is a deeper, more profound meaning here as well. Without darkness, there is no life. All life begins in darkness. In your bulletin is John 12:24: "Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over." The seed is planted in the ground, in the darkness, and it is there the new plant begins to grow. A caterpillar spins around itself a cocoon, and in there, in the darkness, a butterfly forms. A man and a woman come together, and in the darkness of the mother's womb, a new life begins. Part of the Psalm read this morning says, "Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out; you formed me in my mother's womb."

The holiest story of our Christian tradition, of course, is based on this metaphor. The gospels tell us that Jesus died, was buried for three days, and then rose again. You might say Christianity began in the darkness of a tomb.

Of course, it's not only in the Bible that we find this idea. One of the classic forms of literature is known as the hero's journey. We start with the person who will become the hero, living a normal life. Then something comes to threaten that world. The hero must decide to be the one who will step forward an deal with this menace. Along the way, the hero meets archetypal characters who help or hinder the quest. And the very heart of the story is what's known as the death/rebirth scene where the hero meets something traumatic and emerges changed. In the ancient world, this was often expressed literally - the hero goes to Hades and returns. We see it in the Roman saga of Aeneas, in the Greek myths of Orpheus, and so many others. Today, we see it in those who believe Elvis is alive and well. But the point is, the hero faces his or her darkest time and emerges changed and able to help those around him or her. The hero learns from the dark time and grows into a new, stronger person. It's a familiar plot in many books, television shows and films.

A past master at this was J.R.R. Tolkien. Take The Hobbit, which I am slowly listening to for the bazillionth time. You probably know Bilbo the Hobbit sets out with thirteen Dwarves to find a treasure which has been stolen by a dragon. About a third of the way into the story, Bilbo finds himself lost and alone in the darkness under a mountain. He is totally alone in the dark with no idea where his friends are, where exactly he is, or how to get out of there. In that darker than darkness he puts his hand on a ring - on The Ring - I hope you can hear the capital letters in my voice. At that moment, in the dark, his life changes forever. He is no longer Bilbo the silly Hobbit as he sometimes calls himself, but Bilbo the Ring Finder, and that moment will eventually shake the very foundations of the world he inhabits. The death/rebirth motif is even more emphasized in the later trilogy Lord of the Rings. Each of the "good guys" so to speak goes through his own death rebirth journey, from Frodo, stung by the giant spider Shelob and left for dead, to Aragon and those following him taking the Paths of the Dead, going through a mountain tunnel which is the place where dead oath-breakers have dwelt for centuries, to Gandalf the Grey who dies in the Mines of Moria and is sent back to this world as Gandalf the White, each character must face some darkness or deep fear from which they will emerge stronger, and better for the experience.

And like Bilbo and other heroes, we don't stay in the dark - only pale things like mushrooms stay in the dark, but right now in the ground around us in the dark, new life is preparing to break forth, to start the cycle of life again.

Being in the dark is not easy. I've told this story before, but one of my darkest times came eight years ago when a dear friend died from cancer. We had been friends a long time, and in many ways were the complement of each other. She was an extrovert, I'm an introvert. She was the driver. I was the navigator. She was the one who easily formed new relationships. I am a thinker, she was a doer. So her dying left me in darkness, in many ways half a person. But in that darkness, a new life began and I started to grow into a new Karen, very different from the old. You likely have your own stories of growth from darkness. How many have said when fired, for instance, "Why in the world didn't I leave that place sooner?"

There is a well-known name in education, Jean Piaget, who championed the theory of disequilibrium. To paraphrase this, it means that as long as we're snug and comfortable, we don't learn, don't grow. It's only when we are off balance, when the world has tipped around us and we need new skills, new ways of coping that we learn. And most of us will do anything not to see our little world upset. We use all our energy to stay where we are, rather than to embrace uncertainty, embrace mystery, embrace darkness, and open ourselves up to the possibility of growth - because let's face it, it's much easier to stay where we are than to face the difficulties or possible pain of growth. As Hamlet said, fear "makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of."

And that's the bottom line, isn't it. It's fear that keeps us in our comfortable little rut, unchanging - fighting change - not growing. Fear keeps us from taking the risks that might let new life grow in us. Fear… In the science fiction classic Dune, Frank Herbert says it this way: "Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration." Perhaps this is why we read in I John 4:18: "There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life - fear of death, fear of judgment - is one not yet fully formed in love." We mustn't be afraid of the darkness, because God is there. Growth is there.

We have all faced darkness in our lives. There can be sudden overwhelming darkness that descends like an eclipse - the death of a loved one or the diagnosis of cancer for instance. But there are other, lesser kinds of darkness that are painful in their own way.

What is your darkness today? Is it physical illness in yourself or a loved one? Loss of a job? Problems at work? Family troubles? Financial troubles? Or perhaps something more subtle, such as the darkness of an unforgiving heart. The darkness of someone you care for turning against you. The darkness of society's condemnation. The darkness of not fitting in. The darkness of a body failing from age - your own or a loved one. The darkness of loneliness. The darkness of dealing with something chronic - physical, emotional, mental. The darkness of failure. Becoming overwhelmed by the darkness in this world of ours. The darkness of knowing you let someone down. I could go on and on. We all have times of darkness in our lives and they can be painful, and they can seem to go on forever. Yet if we can be present in those times, we will find the lessons and the growth. Darkness and pain can crush us - or they can send us to God - to listen to what God is whispering to us in the depths of our beings.

Nature tells us growth begins in darkness. It is not painless - the seed has to die to create new life. The caterpillar has to die to become a butterfly. But the seed does produce many times itself in the autumn's harvest. The caterpillar becomes a butterfly. As Lao Tzu puts it, "What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly." The child arrives into the world, like the plant and the butterfly blessed by God, and with unlimited potential. We can choose to let the darkness overwhelm us, or we can look for the lessons - and grow.